tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74903792011-08-01T18:33:40.420ZA personal blog about the up's and down's of my life as an indie game developer.Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.comBlogger441100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-64017675181565574502009-09-19T16:11:00.001Z2009-09-19T16:11:30.489Z

Had some issues (see my youtube channel) but finally have Box2D doing object seperation and collision detection for my work-in-progress indie game "Box Mental". All I can say, is that Box2D rocks. I'll definitely be playing with the flash version for another prototype idea I've got. Next up for box mental? Well, need to update the navmesh generation so that it can handle arbitrary scenegraph

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-27438258045598729282009-09-09T16:42:00.001Z2009-09-09T16:42:57.677Z

I'm working on the zombie behaviours still. Here's a work-in-progress video that shows them in action. Zombies = dark guys, humans = light guys.Animations totally messed up there, so I'll be working on that next. I took some time to tiddle with icons and the like, because presentation counts, even for programmer art! :) Posted via email from zoombapup's post-o-matic

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-7398293484842114052009-09-08T16:34:00.001Z2009-09-08T16:34:47.395Z

Oh man. This takes me back. I can't even remember why I started looking for this. But here is a link to a screamtracker mod I did back in 1994.http://cd.textfiles.com/soundmod1/music/s3m_mz/timeout.s3m Plays pretty much as I remember it in VLC too!Back then, I was heavily into the demoscene. Not that there was much of it in the UK. But I was coding my own assembler demos, tracking and all of the

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-50706972351440769012009-09-07T19:42:00.001Z2009-09-07T19:42:03.127Z

Just added a new work-in-progress video to Vimeo. This time its an example of follow behaviour. Basically, the dark guys are zombies and the light guys are humans. Now to work on some recursive dimentional clustering for collision detection between the agents. Posted via email from zoombapup's post-o-matic

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-70562094085466104252009-09-03T07:09:00.001Z2009-09-03T07:09:27.593Z

So here's something interesting. Can you tell whats going on on this video?The game is called His and Her Disconnected Conversations Here's my theory of whats happening.Its basically a sort of weird (and wonderful) take on a matching game. The left hand side is a guy. The right hand side is a girl. When you start, you get three different couples. The couples come together and start talking. Only

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-38061166000240725522009-09-03T06:50:00.001Z2009-09-03T06:50:08.637Z

I just added a work-in-progress video of my current project. Posted via email from zoombapup's posterous

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-11029692722567731382009-05-02T19:44:00.001Z2009-05-02T19:44:44.509Z

I'm going to try and find time this weekend to throw google's "V8" Javascript engine into my game.http://code.google.com/p/v8/Basically, its a javascript implementation intended for embedding within applications (and its used by google in a lot of thier apps).I figure using jscript as a language has some advantages for end users who want to play with modding the game. Alongside the benefits of

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-42677410745172559782009-04-26T23:10:00.003Z2009-04-26T23:22:46.630Z

Well, just sat in on an interesting discussion with Andy Shatz from pocketwatchgames.com over at aigamedev.com for a couple of hours. Fun interview and threw up some really nice details of Andy's games. Interestingly I'm doing something similar in terms of my games being AI based, but I think mine is definitely focussed in a different direction in that I'm really thinking of my game as a toy

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-54419761136931950602009-04-13T13:54:00.003Z2009-04-13T14:12:52.707Z

Been having a hell of a time trying to get a test character exported into the engine with a few choice animations. Mostly my lack of understanding of xforms and pivots and the like. But feels like we've finally broken the back of it (thanks to Jerry Waugh).At this point, the next bit is to work on the texture swapping code and maybe add atlassing in there (the FPS is low because each body part

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-64721571576086887852009-03-16T20:52:00.004Z2009-03-17T20:29:30.246Z

Getting prepared to head off to San Francisco for the GDC and thought I'd post this before I set off on that epic journey.I've been toying with some art styles just for test purposes that allows me to experiment with the level of "realism" required for the behavioral/emotional side to demonstate that at least partially you don't require realism to allow for emotion to show.So I came up with this

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-89166872042005509292009-02-18T19:40:00.002Z2009-02-18T19:58:40.708Z

I've been trying to get my plan together for our lecture at GDC: HereThere's plenty of academic stuff I can go over, particularly models of personality, mood and emotion that you see in a lot of affective computing literature. That of course is pretty useful information in and of itself (great to get going if you're interested in learning more for yourself).But I really wanted to get something so

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-62976783685751423452009-02-08T19:06:00.006Z2009-02-08T19:26:13.596Z

Previously I was working on parsing XML for the game entities and thought I'd continue through to actually parsing the AI setup from that effort. So now after a few hours work (which included a lot of refactoring and there's a ton left to do of that) I can now actually specify an XML file as part of the AIComponent specification in the GameObject's XML.Here's a typical GameObjects XML:Arrgh, it

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-32625013789803103922009-02-05T19:15:00.001Z2009-02-05T19:19:05.619Z

Hmm, seems like a semi-productive day. Snowing outside anyway so I wasn't going to go out I got an XML parser sorted out for the game objects in my engine. Basically all game objects are component based (i.e they use aggregation rather than inheritance).So now I have a bit more flexibility as I can save my test worlds in an xml file and have the world loader class simply load the world.xml file (

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-41022030829261271802008-05-06T17:50:00.010Z2008-12-09T20:06:52.388Z

The making of LEAF Part 2 - Fulfilling the needsThis week, I'm going to cover the starting point for fulfilling the needs we identified in part 1. Specifically, we're going to look at the Behavior Tree structure that will form the starting point for developing the AI interactions.Preamble:Before I cover the AI here, I want to talk about my approach to the game "LEAF" as it is something that might

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-65054688774216438092008-04-05T11:21:00.007Z2008-04-05T11:42:42.817Z

Creating Character MotivationsThe starting point for my implementation of AI characters in LEAF, is to think of the reasons why my AI characters are going to want to do anything interesting. This leads me to think about how I define thier motivations and how I encode them for use by the AI.How do you define motivations? Well, my starting point was Abraham Maslow's "Heirarchy of needs". I'll let

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-38620866455546004112007-12-22T16:49:00.000Z2007-12-22T17:30:51.660Z

I've been playing with various AI problems for [many years now] and for anyone who has tried to do any form of AI, particularly with state machines and heirarchical state machines, you'll have felt that there was something missing.I got to thinking about doing a small AI testbed for some stuff at work and that got me to thinking about maybe doing a small product in order to test out my AI code.

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-53114939971512553132007-11-17T00:28:00.000Z2007-11-17T00:34:39.146Z

The last time I was in "the industry", I worked with a bunch of artists. We literally sat in a little group and had a load of fun.One of the things they used to hassle me about, was this notion of programmers not understanding colour. Thier standard joke was that when you ask a programmer what blue is, they say 00:00:FF (i.e. 0,0,255 or whatever the HTML version of that is).Artists dont really

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-29698092877251968752007-11-04T14:47:00.001Z2007-11-04T14:56:35.003Z

I'm a game programmer by trade. I know, that means I shouldn't comment on art matters right? Well, what about a programmer/designer? If I'm a designer does that make it ok?Now I'm absolutely talentless at actually creating visual art, lets be very clear about that. But I definitely know what I like when I see it. What is strange, is that I'm finding myself feeling more and more like I want to

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-82384324232864416252007-08-27T15:01:00.000Z2007-08-27T15:12:26.363Z

MMO's.Those contentious little buggers which SEEM like they would be fun, but inevitably end up with some level grinding template of elves and orcs bashing "mobs" for some token or other.Why is it that the only alternative to those are either "virtual other life" style things (second life, vSide) or space type games (space cowboy, eve online).I'm looking at the current generation of MMO's and

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-9975863357052913082007-05-29T17:13:00.000Z2007-05-29T17:32:25.270Z

I just finished reading the book Head First Design Patterns which is a really nice read. Even though the content is java oriented, pretty much anyone should be able to take the concepts and patterns explained and apply them in their own language.So you might ask yourself "what the hell are design patterns and why would I want to know them?".Design patterns are a way to look at problems and look

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1168647435248989512007-01-12T23:46:00.000Z2007-05-29T17:36:04.662Z

Oooh, I was kind of at a dead end for most of the day, then after sifting through a thousand and one sweep picking (its a guitar technique) videos on youtube, I stumbled into two interesting things in one day! Joy!First thing, well, actually two things, are from introversions blog.http://www.introversion.co.uk/blog/index.phpI like these guys. I really have no reason to, other than they are brits

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1164041724909767172006-11-20T16:46:00.000Z2007-02-18T01:03:14.296Z

So you want to be an indie developer huh?Well, it’s not all sun and fun in the indie developer realm. In fact, it’s hard. Damn hard. In fact, it’s so hard, that I think you need convincing how hard it is.So let’s get down to some science*Actually, let’s get down to some probability theory!So before we can start analyzing probabilities, we have to give ourselves a goal. So what should that goal be

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1158666948085225162006-09-19T11:55:00.000Z2006-09-19T11:55:50.256Z

I just finished reading Neil Yates's blog:Indie Game Dev RealityA really nice sort of "core dump" of your average indie game developers life. It shows the harsh reality of things for those who think indie is a path to riches.I do think that there is no "average" indie. But of all of the stories I've seen, this one strikes me as what might happen to the typical indie game dev I see on sites like

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1156500909999220912006-08-25T10:11:00.000Z2006-08-25T10:15:10.013Z

I've decided to post random game ideas on my blog. Not for any particular purpose, but because I can.First up: Monkey Knuckle FighterA game where you play a bare knuckle fighter, who also happens to be a primate. Choose from chimpanzee, urangutan, gorilla etc.. You get the picture.Basic beat-em-up, but the twist is the quad-dextrous primates can use the environment to thier advantage. Cross "

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1155903770784255352006-08-18T11:55:00.000Z2006-08-18T12:22:51.433Z

Oh my, are we there already? It was only yesterday it seems that I was wondering what the brave new world of MMO's was going to turn out like. Of course, back then I was playing Everquest and was working in the industry on networking related things, so it could also be classed as "research", but I sure didnt expect things to go the way they have.Today I was looking for indie MMO's, as its an area

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1155165257937723082006-08-09T23:00:00.000Z2006-08-09T23:14:17.956Z

I guess I'm in a strange sort of mood right now. For the last few months I've been more and more critical of the world of media and entertainment. Especially the games industry.Whats swung my mood?The notion of originality and creative essence. Not to put too fine a point on it, I'm bored of most games. I'm bored because they simply dont have any character. They seem to try and use some cookie

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1154220163967690232006-07-30T00:30:00.000Z2006-07-30T00:42:43.980Z

Well, yesterday my good friend Jay Moore announced that he was leaving garagegames. Read it here.I dont know about anyone else, but to me, it feels like the end of an era. An era where we had big dreams and big plans. The last 4 years have been really interesting, not least because I've struggled and overcome and struggled some more.I guess change is inevitable and change is usually good. But

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1150542289194940942006-06-17T10:47:00.000Z2006-06-17T11:04:49.206Z

Call me a crotchety old fart if you like (and I know you will - .z.), but I'm becoming more and more thankful for the internet.There is a notion amongst all game developers and indies are no exception, that there is some magical path to riches. Basically it usually involves making some mega hit game and then selling out to a hyper rich sugar daddy of a company.Frankly, I'm getting weary of the

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1144095033545881322006-04-03T20:00:00.000Z2006-04-03T20:15:25.160Z

So I'm working on the AI pack today and I for some strange reason I started reading about the AI in Oblivion. It was on some serious games mailing list I think.They were talking about the emergent behavior you can see in the game. So I get interested in seeing it.So I go to a local PC world and buy the game. 20 quid is a bargain. But of course I cant stop at one game. In fact, I managed to buy a

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1143497682097775582006-03-27T21:40:00.000Z2006-03-27T22:14:42.136Z

I've just updated the Air Ace website with a few new screenshots Here and it occurred to me I should perhaps blog about a couple of issues that are playing on my mind.The game is similar to the old online games Air Attack Download it here which used to run on the UK network provider "wireplay" and of course Kesmai's Air Warrior, which was bought out and eventually closed down by EA games.So there

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1142864147822367952006-03-20T14:14:00.000Z2006-03-23T13:46:42.013Z

Ok, FPS Blogs so far:Session 1:Nick Rathbone has got GoldenEyeRicky Anderson get The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay.Chris Cousins - Marathon (Bungie)James Barron - HaloPhil Abrham - Star Wars: Dark ForcesCharlotte Cook - FEARMatt Thayre - Soldier of FortuneIan Baker and Oliver Turner have both chosen Far Cry. We are resolving the clash.Session 2:Graham Rust get Star Wars: Republic

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1140973099566979422006-02-26T16:36:00.000Z2006-02-26T16:58:19.603Z

About a year and a half ago, I went to a meeting setup by the guys behind "the game creators" website. It was really a fun meeting, plus I met a good friend there, along with maybe 100 or so other indie developers.I was just thinking today, I wonder how many really competant indie developers there are in the UK?The ones I know about right now:Pompom - creators of shmupsMoonpod - smups again,

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1140874053528470652006-02-25T13:03:00.000Z2006-02-25T13:33:18.086Z

Ok, I've just laid in supplies for the weekend. MP3 player is at the ready and the world is locked out for the weekend.Things have been going crazy recently, both at work and in my games. I can't really talk about work (students may be watching), but I can certainly talk about games.Jeff Tunnell posted This blog entry about blogging and how people are linking up and talking about games. It makes

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1140274483555776122006-02-18T14:29:00.000Z2006-02-18T14:59:57.103Z

I just read Jeff Tunnell's blog http://makeitbigingames.com/blog/?p=15 and it got me thinking. As soon as someone sees even a modest success, why is it that we are drawn to then emulate that success rather than trying to carve out our own?I suppose it is human nature, to try and copy clear successes, but if you think about it, unless you are really an early-runner in any race, it is very hard to

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1133454701923155182005-12-01T16:09:00.000Z2005-12-01T16:31:41.976Z

A student of mine just got his first games job way to go Matt! That got me thinking about the whole games company interview process. In particular, I have had my fair share of interviews, which I somehow seem to have lost the questions for. So I did some quick digging to try and find some websites with useful "game programmer interview" questions.Usually during the final months of thier studies,

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1110289897304183552005-11-30T02:21:00.000Z2005-11-29T18:20:31.890Z

This next month or so, I'm taking part in some games centric research. I don't really want to pre-empt our findings here, but just to pass on some of the interesting links to interesting literature we've come across whilst doing the literature review.The first one is by Melissa Federoff. While I feel that she is maybe stretching the value of HCI professionals in the latter part of her paper, I

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1110207753693050492005-11-30T02:19:00.000Z2005-11-29T18:22:12.800Z

I just read the March issue of Game Developer and was quite outraged by an article about a DICE conference speech by a guy called Marc Ecko (a billionaire designer of "cool" clothing), where he was saying that he thought game developers were producing games without a clue about thier audiences desires.I certainly don't feel 100% in line with Marc's thinking, especially as I totally dislike the

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1111600397097622212005-03-23T17:20:00.000Z2005-03-23T18:00:29.823Z

I finished Brothers in arms by Gearbox yesterday.I won't give anything away about the game specifics here, but as anyone who knows me will attest, I'm a BIG fan of this style of game, so I really want to analyze the decisions they made in creating the game.If you look at the game from a purely marketing point of view, the obvious competitors are games like Call of Duty, Medal of Honour and

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1110649071284512462005-03-12T17:31:00.000Z2005-03-12T17:42:51.066Z

Man, anyone who knows me personally, will know that on the odd occasion [ok, maybe an understatement], I like the occasional rant.Mainly, I rant about the state of my chosen profession (games development).Something quite new is that the industry is actually starting to come out of the undeground concrete bunker-esque closet and rant publically about its own ills!CrystalTips: Burn the house

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1109678898082536102005-03-01T12:03:00.000Z2005-03-01T12:46:03.466Z

I've got this sheepy dilemma right now and I'm trying to work through the options.In the game, I've got to show how many sheep have been "counted" for a particular obstacle or endpoint versus how many are "required".The first thing that came to mind, was a GUI element, which Ive mocked up and stuck in the bottom right corner of the screenie below.But that felt a little disassociated from the

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1109527691291609102005-02-27T17:49:00.000Z2005-02-27T18:09:37.566Z

As an independant developer (actually, as an independant ANYTHING) you have to be aware that for most people, you *are* your products.As a commercial developer, typically you get to be in the background, an anonymous drone who is merely another cog in the big wheel that eventually churns out the product.Developers themselves have the same problem, when their publisher sees them as just another

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1106044503333745162005-01-18T10:32:00.000Z2005-01-18T10:37:50.590Z

Hey Ho.I'm just sat in a class right now, waiting while my students run through a mock exam (theyre sitting the real ones next week). Looks like we might be able to ship our first game in the next 4 weeks. Although thats not really saying much, because this is our first *highly experimental* mobile game! I say experimental not in game design, but more in testing the waters of mobile development

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1105633897251444442005-01-13T16:20:00.000Z2005-01-19T14:17:18.346Z

Hmm, Ive been reading recently that a lot of people are moving towards web-based functionality over desktop applications. I can definitely see why that would be the case. Web-based mail for instance has saved my ass on many occassions when I have had assignments or lecture notes to take to uni and havent had my USB key with me. I usually gmail them to myself from my mac and download them in the

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1105633054970747292005-01-13T16:09:00.000Z2005-01-13T16:17:34.970Z

Hmm, now this is definitely going to be an interesting year. After the wash-out that was 2004 I think I'm about due. 2005 sees the start of a new chapter in the history of ScaryHead. I'm definitely expecting much more to happen business wise this year. Frankly, if we dont have at least 2 games finished and shipped this year I'm going to re-think the whole of my development plans. I'm not the

Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0